


And the cherries of Sakaar blossomed

by nothingbutflowers



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Other, Responsibilities, Romance, Translation, a bit of humour here and there, a complete character study, destiny is real i suppose, duties, en dwi stuttering uhhhh, genderqueer Loki, general internal conflict, i read too much proust and this is what i come up with, inteligent beings in an union, loki being angsty but nice, not really into the thor films so i am inspired by literally anything else, polish to english, slowburn, studying love and immortality like some NERD, thor ragnarok - Freeform, trying to convey something, which i love deeply
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 12:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17203697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutflowers/pseuds/nothingbutflowers
Summary: Loki meets an eternal entity, also known as the Grandmaster. He begins to realize that it might've been written in the stars all along.Character study, philosophical garbage, grand romance.





	And the cherries of Sakaar blossomed

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Rozkwitły Wiśnie Sakaaru](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/444389) by racehorsegotmarried. 



> English is not my first language, but I love it immensely. Sorry for any mistakes, I am trying my best here. Enjoy!

**** What we need to establish, is that the Grandmaster was a reasonable man.

 

Of course, this was a completely incorrect sentence. First of all, the Grandmaster didn’t have much to do with people. He might’ve been made of the same elements as them; he had a pair of legs, a pair of eyes, a pair of brows – there might’ve even been a pair of lungs somewhere underneath – but appearances can often be deceptive. No one but him knew what his body consisted of; and although popular speculations would often point at stardust, he’d swear it was mostly sex appeal. The truth just wasn’t meant to ever surface, hidden in human-like behaviours and interests. Not like it mattered; not many Sakaarians were human either. They didn’t last long around here.

 

Second of all, the Grandmaster “is”. No matter the proper grammar usage, no matter the point in time, no matter the state of fluidity, the Grandmaster solely existed in the present tense. Absolute creations weren’t used to rules put over languages. Absolute creations spent centuries floating over this earthly etiquette, leaving behind hysterical chroniclers and badly written stories.

 

Lastly, the Grandmaster wasn’t reasonable in the tiniest bit.

 

He wasn’t also sure about why his special spaceship had crashed in the middle of the city, but someone was getting fired.

 

No mortal can possibly imagine the magnitude of a hangover inside the heads of creatures with minds the size of Asgard. The best comparison would be the collapse of a neutron star – here, however, we’re too deep into metaphors so niche, they could only be understood by said stars. The Grandmaster’s hangover was like feeling smothered by the crowd a concert, being crushed by a meteorite, or being wiped off the face of the planet with a snap of a stranger’s fingers.

 

He just couldn’t scrub himself off the floor.

 

He looked down at himself, not even trying to force a sound out of his sandpapered throat. He didn’t look half bad. The orange floor really brought out his calves. His chest was smudged with blue pigment; someone must’ve really enjoyed his lip make-up. He smiled lightly. If only his arms didn’t weigh a ton, he would’ve checked if there was anything left on his face. He suspected otherwise.

 

The first clue was, definitely, today’s cast speckled with garish colours, their lips blue with said pigment. He even recognized some of them – that girl, he saw her on some party once, that beautiful boy was sitting next to him on the tribunes a while ago, and these two had definitely escaped his barracks for involuntary volunteers. He’s going to take care of later. After all, Topaz hasn’t melted anyone in a while and The Void seems to be craving dinner.

 

‘Has anyone-Has anyone seen my robe?’ He managed a question, all scrunched up. His voice in the morning sounded a bit like something a failed seducer would produce – a term officially coined as the antonym of his name by all sakaarian vocabularies. ‘Cherry red? Satin? I don’t blame you for, uh, tearing it off me, but it’s the best pyjama I have.’

Nobody answered. Silence in the room rang even louder than it had before.

 

‘The door won’t open if I don’t get my robe back’ The Grandmaster warned. ‘It won’t bother me, but most, uh, most of you will have to resort to cannibalism’.

 

He could practically count the sounds of nervous swallowing. Oh, come on. Terrorizing your serfs before pleasure, as someone wise had once said. Or, it could’ve just been a nonsensical idiom. The Grandmaster’s opinions varied wildly. Thinking is an incredibly intricate process, especially when all of the ancient racks in your brain double in triple alongside psychedelic colours, as slug-like molasses of ideas drips between. 

 

He needed a hair of the dog.

 

‘Here it is, Grandmaster’ a weak voice finally emerged, as a dainty boy was pushed to the front by other party goers. The older man sighed, eyeing both the terrified face and the terrifying fabric. 

 

Good thing he had a lot of laundries. 

 

‘Fine.’ He sighed, putting on the apparel with caution. His headache was way too much of a torment to just start traumatizing the innocent with screaming. ‘Uh, fine. Superb. You can all leave now!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Thank you for coming, it was most likely, uh, absolutely exquisite. If anyone knows, please, inform me of the pilot’s identity. There’s a great prize waiting! I need to congratulate the party chief myself!’

 

His guests looked at each other with confusion. It seems like even they thought of an emergency landing in the middle of Sakaar as slight overkill. 

 

‘All good, you, uh, you have all the time in the world.’ The host smiled calmingly. ‘A prize’s just like a needle. It’s reeeeally hard to find it.’

 

And since he managed to startle the entire crowd, he smiled once again. He then left the room, his steps almost bouncy.

 

Oh man, it’s been a while.

 

The residential part of the planet has always sparked his interest. He never had the chance to live the life of an average mortal – therefore, he didn’t have the slightest idea about the way social structures really operated. He just really loved observing them as an outsider. He admitted to himself that he couldn’t possibly bear to marinate in those small houses and flats, trying to maintain pointless conversations a long time ago. He was way too advanced for all that. Not even speaking from a place of narcissism, he just preferred a realist outlook. Superhuman creatures just didn’t have the time and space for the problems mere citizens faced. Cosmic problems had a much wider and much more critical scale than that.

 

‘Grandmaster’ Topaz seemingly sprung out the ground behind him, almost causing him a heart attack. Well, an equivalent of it. He wasn’t quite sure what would happen to the star he was currently using as a heart; he suspected that it might’ve turned into a pulsar. A blue one, he hoped. ‘We’ve localised the pilot.’

 

‘You almost killed me. But, uh, you read my mind, Topaz, what would I do without you’ he sighed, patting down his robe. Oh no, he touched the stain. He flinched, trying to wipe it as discreetly, as humanly possible. ‘You know what, uh, awaits him. I think it counts as a coup, doesn’t it?’

 

‘Technically speaking, yes.’ His security guard answered. ‘He’s just been captured, Grandmaster.’

 

‘Perfect. Uh, just leave him like this. So it’s suspenseful.’ He waved his hand in the air dramatically. ‘Just let him know he’ll fight Dexter next week.’

 

He stopped for a moment. His head was exploding from the inside.

 

‘Topaz?’

 

‘Yes, Grandmaster?’

 

‘Why haven’t I outlawed Mondays?’

 

‘You had, Grandmaster. It currently is a Friday evening.’

 

He looked around. The sun was barely coming up, the morning dew was leaving an aftertaste of petrol in his mouth, and someone has just shot a defenceless spaceship off the orange aurora. Very typical for Sakaar. He frowned.

 

‘I don’t, uh, I don’t want to sound rude, Topaz, but I would bet that it’s not even eight yet’ 

 

‘It’s not, Grandmaster. You ordered to outlaw Friday mornings because “evenings are so much more pleasant”. Do you really not remember?’

 

He bit his lip. She might’ve been right.

 

She was! He almost forgot about his little joke. He was just really curious about how the citizens would act if the rules were to change. They didn’t disappoint; just like perfect test subjects, they adapted immediately. His dearest cosmic strays. 

 

‘Ah, yes, true. I feel better already.’ He touched his hair lightly. ‘I need the best cognac we have. And gel. A lot of gel.’

 

‘Yes, Grandmaster.’ The woman looked at him with her usual scepticism. ‘Will you make it to the palace?’

‘Ha! Of course, I’ll make it into the palace!’ He laughed. ‘No, of course, I won’t. My head’s gonna implode any second. Don’t we have some sort of a, uh, train?’

 

‘You can take the gondola, Grandmaster’

 

Sakaarian gondolas didn’t have the best reputation. En Dwi bit his lip as he thought. Falling from such height wouldn’t even result in a bruise – two hundred meters is nothing when you compare it to flying through a black hole. And those funny little trolleys rode all the way up to his room. If anyone could make it through the rigorously anti-mortal voyage, they definitely weren’t a person of disinterest. One of the most frequent death causes when it came to the gondolas, were, after all, desperate leaps out of the windows.

 

He sighed. At least he’ll get to enjoy the view.

 

‘I’ll take it. My jacuzzi better be, uh, ready when I’m done.’

 

‘Yes, Grandmaster.’

 

He ignored her frankly lofty tone. Letting Topaz believe in her intellectual capacity could’ve been the meanest thing he’s ever done.

 

He suspended himself in the air, over the gap which served as the floor. Did users really throw themselves out of windows? He had to check. The only thing he knew, was that someone won the actual ground at poker. At least that’s what the person said. The Grandmaster didn’t lose. Literally, it was impossible for him not to win. 

 

The trolley took off, gliding over the city lazily. Sakaar was truly beautiful. The Grandmaster couldn’t be happier about it. He liked pretty things. Especially, when he made them himself.

 

He would be lying if he said that he didn’t expect such progress to occur. Since the very beginning, he expected a stream of cosmic travellers. Creating a planet resembles placing an oasis in the very middle of a void after all; demand grows bigger than supply and sooner or later you’re enjoying billions upon billions of citizens. It was perfectly fine with him – it went perfectly the way he planned. The element of surprise has only made the process of building a galactic utopia more pleasant. He could bet (and then win) that the other Elders weren’t doing even half as good. Their excessive, lush ambitions, their idiotic obsessions, they all led into dead ends. En Dwi Gast knew them way too well to expect reason. 

 

He studied his creation with the delight of a child.

 

Life turned out to be pretty liable when it came to manipulation. All mortal forms needed was space, tools and an ideology – those obvious components assembled into elaborate structures, working in perfect harmony. The Grandmaster adored those endless cogwheels and gears, turning underneath his feet. Existence in its entirety hummed a perfect intergalactic hum, and all he needed to do was listen. Sakaar practically sang him to sleep. Ideal, with all its T’s dotted, the crown jewel to end all his masterpieces. One giant game played by hundreds of thousands of mortals, with the Grandmaster rolling all the dice.

 

To think that it was called the junkyard of space! To think, that his dearest brother held that same toxic belief. Cool, little guy, what a shame that all of your life’s work could’ve been erased by a bunch of half-baked superheroes.

 

_ Touchée. _

 

Unlike artificially created collections, Sakaar could naturally prosper. It tightly enlaced the ground it was built on, it breathed, it growled and defended itself against attackers like a live organism. It was eager to adopt anyone, successfully creating a community of intergalactic outcasts – while not being able to get rid of its contributors. After all, you can’t just take out a part of a human’s intestine and hope that both of them keep on functioning like usual. The Grandmaster could assure all the arrogant sceptics, that neither the bowel nor the mortal would do on their own for much longer.

 

Here on Sakaar, everything had a responsibility. Therefore, En Dwi Gast had no idea about the origin of a smoky crater in the very middle of his gardens.

 

As he descended in the elevator, he couldn’t possibly hide his irritation. How shameless does one have to be to destroy the perfect composition of his flower beds without him? All they needed to do was ask. He was the first in line when it came to explosives. He could’ve brought fireworks. Or champagne. Or fireworks and champagne. Improv parties scored really high in the subjective ranking of the Grandmaster’s favourite social events. He and the anonymous arsonists could’ve taken part in an amazing evening, accompanied by amazing music and philosophical conversations. Instead, he had to send them to the Arena. Such a waste.

 

He smiled to himself. Or not. Let them suffer, those party saboteurs. 

 

The gardens of Sakaar were a gift from an old friend from work, Ord. He needed to return the favour, after being granted immortality, that old rag. In some fields, he’s earned En Dwi’s uttermost respect; one of them being gardening. He might’ve been a lost old man, agitating unwittingly across empty planets, he might’ve made the Grandmaster laugh with his lack of general consciousness, but did that son of a gun know how to create natural constructions! His lifelong devotion to one particular passion did eventually amount to cooking up something actual living creatures would see. His bloody audiences of literal deer wouldn’t appreciate the effort anyway.

 

The trees in these gardens were heavy with cherry blossoms, no matter the season (even though the Grandmaster formally banned everything except for summer, they just kept changing). En Dwi’s lovers could spend entire hours harvesting shiny fruit from weighty branches, always amazed by the unnatural amount of it. Paradise lost, promised land, just like na’s backyard – all of those allegories would bloom in the visitors’ mouths, just like lilac and bluebells under their feet. The bushes rose up to the skies, their leaves, and buds greener than anything mortals would ever see. The parterres of wildflowers stolen from the furthest recesses of all the galaxies radiated with every colour a mind can imagine as if they were the seedlings of nebulas. There even were unique sakaarian roses, utterly blue. 

 

In the middle of these very roses, of something that once was a fabulous explosion of turquoise, a fabulous explosion of a crater occurred. 

 

The Grandmaster sighed, rolling up his sleeves. Just for show. It’s not like he actually planned on going down there.

 

‘Let’s, uh, let’s make this clear!’ He announced, loud and clear, with just enough menace to make every unlucky teenager tremble in fear. ‘If you come out now, you’ll, uh, you’ll have a chance to avoid unpleasant, painful and completely unnecessary, if you ask me, death. If not, however, your chance to avoid unpleasant, painful and unnecessary death shrinks to, uh, lemme think, none.’

 

He stopped for a second before carrying on. He blinked.

 

The crater was slowly stopping to resemble one. When he squinted, he could even register some movement in there. A figure stuck in the roses, desperately trying to escape, while definitely being there. Furthermore, it cursed loudly. Sakaarian roses were quite a puzzle to crack – their roots operated in extremely intricate ways so that untangling would resemble a game. En Dwi made sure that liberation was near impossible without a certain tactic.

 

Fascinating. It’s been a while since he’s seen an illusion this convincing! He could drag his fingers along the edges of the breach and feel the burned leaves at his fingertips. There would probably even be thorns stuck in his hand. It seems like he was facing a true professional.

 

He waved at the creature with his fingers. A wide smile stretched on his face.

 

‘Fantastic job. Really, I am so, uh, impressed. You can, uh, you can forget all about unnecessary death!’ He checked out the neat little finishings. ‘Did you, uh, plan all of this? Done any scheming in your head? Drew up those funny, uh, blueprints? My dear, so good you’re on Sakaar! Just a place for such young talents!’

 

He could only imagine the entertainment someone so skilled could provide.

 

‘Sakaar?’ A voice emerged from the illusion. ‘What the hell is Sakaar?’

 

The crater dissolved. Without the dreamlike halo, the newcomer looked, to say it lightly, pathetic. Facing the opposite direction, his apparel torn and dirty. En Dwi smacked his lips with true compassion.

 

‘I don’t know how to, uh, break it to you, sweetcheeks, but this robe has just given up its ghost.’

 

The character turned around slowly, still cursing. They were lucky the Grandmaster possessed great patience. A more impulsive person could, for example, stick a control disc on their neck. Or attack them with a disintegration staff. But it would be such waste, such shame, to get rid of someone so pleasant for the eye.

 

The cosmic castaway looked pretty great, considering their recent fall into a bush of barbed-wire like plants. They must’ve spent quite some time just flying over Sakaar; the closest portal was placed far away from the gardens so that such occurrences would be avoided. If En Dwi wasn’t mistaken, the young person must’ve been falling for at least half an hour. At least in outside time. Here, it boiled down to, in the worst case, two seconds. 

 

They surveyed him with wild eyes. Underneath that mass of hair of theirs, complicated procedures were apparently taking place. Adorable. The Grandmaster was filled with a sudden desire to tug at their worried little cheeks. 

 

‘You must be the manager of this’ he gestured carelessly. That poor being. Even when trying to maintain a serious facade, he was constantly giving away his confusion. ‘This Sakaar.’

 

‘Congrats! We got a smart one!’ The self-proclaimed planet supervisor revealed his teeth with a grin. ‘I’m afraid you just crash-landed in the most fabulous place in the multiverse, friend.’

 

‘Great. Are nordic goddesses allowed in here?’

 

‘We are, uh, mostly atheist.’

 

A dazed smile was the newcomer’s last reaction before he collapsed into flower buds.


End file.
